ASUS P5N-T Deluxe @ [H]

ASUS P5N-T Deluxe - Our last 780i NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI chipset review, seems to hold a lot of promise with its solid design and with the features that the NVIDIA chipset brings to the table. Just how well does this board compare with the rest of the Intel board, or even the other NVIDIA based boards?

Editor's Note: I think it is worth mentioning that yes, this review is very "late." Products such as the P5N-T that show stability issues sometimes prove to be 3x or 4x the workload of a board that works properly. Still we try to work through and make sure that we are not doing something wrong rather than just assuming it is a hardware problem. This is one of the reasons we use two completely independent reviewers, operating systems, and equipment to review each board. Basically every board is reviewed twice. Still this review is late and should have been posted at least a month ago, but to be honest, I just did not care much about it and it slipped through the cracks. Anyway, sorry for posting old material. Had the board not sucked so badly, you would have likely seen this posted in March of this year.

I bought this mobo the day it was released. It would not be stable under any conditions. I tried a new bios also, same result. I was using a quadcore cpu at the time. This was the most expensive and worse mobo I have ever bought. I got the p5e, and was up and running with a stable oc in minutes. I thought my problems were because of the first batch of mobo released, but i guess the troubles continue...buyer beware!!!

After having no problems with abit for years, I decided to move from a 939 pin abit mobo that was a little lacking.
Everyone was down on abit so I decided to go the ASSUS route. I too purchased the p5n-deluxe board the day it came out, and have nothing but trouble out of it when running a quadcore intel G0 q6600. At first I thought it was a ram issue, or an OS issue, or power(running a 1KW enermax now) ..but all signs have pointed to the board. I tried multiple BIOS revisions to no avail.
I didnt read too many reviews of the board, only previews.
In the end Im thoroughly disappointed in the board and the ASSus name, and this board totally reaffirms my stance. Im thinking I should have went with one of the reference 780i boards(the evga one perhaps). When the ASSus p5-t first came out it was billed as the first non reference design 780i board .I think it was rushed to market and it shows.

..article seems pretty accurate from what I've seen/heard about this particular Asus mobo..I ended up with 2 EVGA780i boards(q6600 &e8400), both work well(both can go 500fsb and >) and given it's winter here(almost anywayzz), having a heater next to you is a good thing - yes, 780i has it's down-side, it's really an interim product with potential to overkill(tri-sli, ffs how many vid-cards can 1 buy?) the techno-head with too much $$ to spare..Pity those solid caps weren't on the EVGA780i...

After having no problems with abit for years, I decided to move from a 939 pin abit mobo that was a little lacking.
Everyone was down on abit so I decided to go the ASSUS route. I too purchased the p5n-deluxe board the day it came out, and have nothing but trouble out of it when running a quadcore intel G0 q6600. At first I thought it was a ram issue, or an OS issue, or power(running a 1KW enermax now) ..but all signs have pointed to the board. I tried multiple BIOS revisions to no avail.
I didnt read too many reviews of the board, only previews.
In the end Im thoroughly disappointed in the board and the ASSus name, and this board totally reaffirms my stance. Im thinking I should have went with one of the reference 780i boards(the evga one perhaps). When the ASSus p5-t first came out it was billed as the first non reference design 780i board .I think it was rushed to market and it shows.

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I used to be an Asus user but after beta testing too many of their f/n boards/bios's, it was time to move on...this has been the Asus way for a while now, seems nothing has changed ..GL anywayz!!

The NF4 A8N SLi-Deluxe I got 3 years ago is still running great. It's been in my media server the entire time, and being hooked up to a beefy UPS, it's been up for the VAST majority of the past 3 years.

I bought this board, had terrible stability problems and discovered that the root cause of mine was that the DDR2 Vterm voltage was not Vdd/2, but some odd value that was much too low. I manually adjusted the termination voltage to match Vdd/2 and it's been solid as a rock.

Used to be that you couldn't go wrong with an Asus but now you really have to take a good look around first. Last two boards I had (M2N-E was way too picky with ram, and the Crosshair was unreliable too) were crap. the nforce2 board I had from them was very good though.

Figured the last two boards from Asus for me were no good so I went with Gigabyte this time and have been happy so far

My A8N-SLI Premium with an Athlon X2 4400+ is still going strong and has never let me down. My Striker Extreme 680i is less stable than my NF4 board, but I haven't had many problems with it. It's been replaced because it doesn't support quads so that's a major letdown. It will probably end in a HTPC project. Nvidia chipset's aren't that bad, but Intel's are better in the long run

If you notice, there's already a theme in the responses concerning Nvidia chipsets: AMD-based are great, Intel-based are spotty. So look for unique factors, such as AMD's IMC (intergrated Memory Controller). This example takes a burden off of Nvidia, while also limiting it. With Intel-based chipsets, Nvidia has much more autonomy. While they are not always successful in their execution, I have to praise them for their ambition and innovation when given the opportunity. And to be fair, these qualities come into much more admirable focus and fruition when considering Nvidia's own reference-design. It seems to be a case where Intel is witholding from Nvidia, and Nvidia witholding from Intel and/or others. And Asus is, in a manner, caught in between these two antagonistic juggernauts. So, as bitter as I am personally over my Striker Extreme experience last year, I'm willing to cut Asus some slack as they are obviously in a difficult position in this particular context.

Seems to be luck of the draw. I could only get pathetic overclocks on 680/780i reference chipsets from evga, and had to reload the OS at least 3 times over the course of 2 months due to random OS freezes. Switched to a Maximus Formula, and has been smooth sailing so far.

All it really takes is one bad board/exp to ruin your trust in a brand/company, and the only real way to make up for this is through good customer service. This unfortunately is also where ASUS falls flat on their face compared to companies like evga.

The blame for this is split.
On the one hand, I'm not too quick to blame Asus, given the instability problems everyone has had with the 780 and 680 chipsets. That points to NVIDIA problem, not Asus.

On the other hand, I wish that all board makers would be brave enough to skip a chipset and tell the maker (NVIDIA, in this case) to "Get back to us when the chipset actually works".
There are enough solid boards made with 750 and 650 chipsets to show that the board makers can make a great product as long as they're a decent chipset to start with.

NVIDIA is like any other company; as long as people are willing to buy their product, they have no incentive to fix what's broken. If board makers had taken a pass on the 680 and the 780, we would have probably gotten a 690 and gotten the 790 a lot sooner.

I can understand how reviewing such a poor product must be tedious and frustrating at best, but sharing the BAD reviews, especially on an enthusist marketed board, are just as important, to me at least, in making good build decisions.

I come here for honest, relevant, factual, and usually timely info. Good or Bad. This was a bit of a let down.

I wish you had reviewed this piece of crap back in January. I bought one in late January. By mid Febuary I was so frustrated with the thing I "gave' it to a moderator(he was helping the other suckers and I but, he didn't have access to the board) over at the Asus forums for trying to help us out.

This mobo was so bad it scared me away from the new Asus sound card even though I hate creative for ripping off their customers.

I can feel my chest tighten every time I hear P5N-T Deluxe. Gets my blood pressure up

P.S. I went out and bought the XFX 780i board afterward and had no problems other than how hot the MCP gets with stock cooling. I remounted heatsink(properly), switched out the stock fan and its now all good.

I bought this board, had terrible stability problems and discovered that the root cause of mine was that the DDR2 Vterm voltage was not Vdd/2, but some odd value that was much too low. I manually adjusted the termination voltage to match Vdd/2 and it's been solid as a rock.

I just picked up a good deal on the 780i and it's very beastly 775 setup. We had to pull the chipset mosfet heatsink assembly. Used a flat razor to scrape off the chip pads and thermal paste. Cleaned off the heatsink with 91% alcohol and Scotch pads. Re-pasted with arctic silver ceramique 2 and now the northbridge/ southbridge sits around 45C. Before we can see 78C all day lol.

Anyway idk why everyone thinks the p5n-t deluxe and 780i is a headache? It's a handful to dial in the bios just right for a stable overclock that's for sure. That applies to any board though. This board handles huge voltages and huge overclocks without breaking a sweat.

We upgraded it to the all-mighty socket 771 to 775 modded Intel Xeon X5470 3.33ghz quad with 12mb cache. It's stronger than the QX9750 which is the best highest performing 775 chip.

The Intel Xeon X5470 is one beastly chip! 120W and was easily able to achieve 4Ghz without breaking a sweat. We just had to update bios, mod the socket, add the 771 to 775 sticker to the cpu, and it booted right up. Runs stronger than an i7 920 by stock.